This Spring’s Must-Reads
Spring is in the air, and good books are in our hearts! Read on for our picks for this spring’s best literary offerings. Night At The Fiestas Kirstin Valdez Quade Norton, March 23 $26 Buy: book ∣ebook Kirstin Valdez Quade is one of the National Book Foundation’s 5-Under-35
Goliath: Reading Kyle Dargan’s “Honest Engine” During the Baltimore Riots
I read Kyle Dargan’s poem “Goliath” the night of the Baltimore riots. I was in Mexico City where the images of the riots made it to the Mexican presses before the story did—Freddie Gray, the police beatings, his snapped spinal cord. The details simply hadn’t been translated yet. But the
Round-Down: eBooks on the Go
Two new partnerships with digital media distribution platforms are allowing publishers to make it even easier to get electronic books in the hands of travelers this month. On May 6, Kobo, a Rakuten company, and Global Eagle Entertainment, Inc. launched a reading platform that will allow Southwest Airlines passengers to access,
The Candles and the Soap: On Vonnegut, Death, and Repetition
Placed after a mention of death or dying, Kurt Vonnegut’s “So it goes” refrain throughout Slaughterhouse Five utilizes repetition to explore the inevitability of death. Early on in the book, Billy Pilgrim writes a letter to a newspaper about his experiences with extra terrestrials, and explains the origin of the phrase: When
Writing my way in, or, Writing my way out
Somewhere deep in the “remotest mansions of the blood,” where Lorca said the duende lives, I think I still have the capacity for a good cry. At some point in my life I lost this. Or it was wrested from me. Either way it’s now as foreign a tongue
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Day Trip” by Noelle Catharine Allen
There’s a wonderful history of short stories where a character’s physical ills work as a metaphor representing larger problems, both personal and societal. For instance, in Julio Cortázar’s “Letter to a Lady in Paris,” the protagonist regularly vomits live rabbits, a reality we come to realize not only provides
The Poetry of Subtle Movement
In recent months, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has released two poetry collections that encapsulate much of what I love about poetry: James Lasdun’s Bluestone: New and Selected Poems and Devin Johnston’s Far-Fetched. Lasdun and Johnston are quite different in style and subject matter, but they are both masters of
Round-Down: North Carolina and Idaho Schools Face Proposed Book Bans
Concerns over the age-appropriateness of books is nothing new. Efforts to ban books are perennial attempts of, assumedly, those worried about a book’s potential to negatively impact a reader too young to access its merit. At Melville House, Taylor Sperry discusses the recent attempt at banning Khaled Hosseini’s The
No Real for You
I’m going to begin by asking your forgiveness for two things I usually don’t do. The first is speaking Spanish in my English. The second is using the prefix meta-. But this is a family of meta-fictional twins, and come on, don’t you agree that “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”
Remembering Forward: History Reclaimed through Poetry
As sure as our perceptions of history are inherited, they are also incomplete. “History throws its shadow over the beginning,” wrote the poet Richard Siken. “History is a little man in a brown suit / trying to define a room he is outside of. / I know history. There